Game of Thrones stays true to 'brutal' source text

Halfway into the first episode of Game of Thrones,
an ambitious prince forces his gorgeous sister to marry a barbarian
so he can gain the backing of the warrior's army. Prince Viserys
(played by Harry Lloyd) tells Princess Daenerys (Emily Clarke), "I
would let the whole tribe fuck you -- all 40,000 men and their
horses, too -- if that's what it took."

There are plenty of swords, horses, warring kingdoms and men in capes in US TV
channel HBO's medieval fantasy, but Game of
Thrones carves out its own territory by pushing all those
Lord of the Rings-style conventions to the R-rated
extreme.

The result is a show laced with violence, vulgarity and no
shortage of nudity. In a conference call last week, series
executive producers David
Benioff and D.B. Weiss said
they had no interest in diluting the adult-oriented source material
created by George R.R. Martin in his multibook A
Song of Ice and Fire saga.

"We wanted to keep the sexuality of the books," said Benioff of
the new show, which dramatises the fantasy series' first novel in a
ten-episode run that starts Sunday. "We wanted to keep the
profanity. We wanted the brothel scenes. We wanted the bloody
violence. If someone's head gets chopped off, you are going to see
blood spurting out.

Fans who adore the best-selling books can take comfort in the
fact that Martin was consulted throughout production. Unlike
Watchmen author Alan Moore, who disdains
Hollywood's makeovers of his material, former TV writer
Martin contributed casting ideas and penned the second episode of
the HBO show. He even had plenty to say about dragon design.

"George was a huge asset", said Benioff, who earlier scripted
Brad Pitt's 2004 swordplay epic, Troy. "George
has very definitive ideas about what dragons should look like
because we wanted the dragons that he sees on-screen to closely
mirror the ones that he had in his head."

Judging from the succinct review proffered by Martin's wife,
Benioff and Weiss hewed true to the book's spirit. At an advance
screening, Weiss recalls, "She turned to us after it was over and
said, 'Guys, you didn't fuck it up.'"

The big challenge in adapting Martin's work for the screen
relates to the sheer magnitude of storylines and characters. Early
episodes centre on the noble Stark family. Housed in the Winterfell
castle, they rule a northern kingdom on the fictional continent
of Westeros,
but that's just the tip of the infighting iceberg. Six other
dysfunctional clans vie for power, which adds up to a lot of names
and faces to keep straight.

In fact, much of the Game of Thrones pilot had to be
reshot in order to clarify relationships between the sprawling cast
of characters, Benioff said. "We'd showed the original pilot to
very intelligent friends who watched carefully and, at the end,
they had no idea that Cersei
Lannister and Jaime
Lannister were brother and sister."

Game of Thrones' producers hope the thorny relationships and
bloody encounters draw a big enough crowd to justify six more
seasons encompassing all of Martin's Song of Ice and
Fire material.

"George is brutal" Benioff said. "He's rough on his characters.
Anyone and everyone is at risk of getting his or her head lopped
off. That makes the show very tense and will hopefully keep people
tuning in every week."

Game of
Thrones premieres on Sunday on HBO. Check out Wired.com
for video clips.